Paulette T. • I have the same questions as you do...but, how do we locate a resource to educate us?

Jeff B. • I personally do not use Twitter. I own a Career Development company and I remain extremely cautious when I represent someone. I am sure if you utilize it carefully and perform your due diligence you will be fine. I have no particular reason that I don't use Twitter except for I have no time. Between representing my clients and working closely with my company contacts, I barely have time to utilize LinkedIn. I am not sure I answered your question but I wanted to throw my two cents in.

Richard S. • Twitter is about engagement and content. If you provide both then the candidates will find you. By all means send jobs out but really focus on what you are sending out and think why someone would be interested in it. If they are interested enough they will retweet it and all of a sudden the whole world knows about it. An example I can give you is a client of ours, a teaching recruitment agency, sent a tweet out that was seen by someone in China who told his friend in London who is a teacher and he went and registered with them and has been placed. There are also a number of useful tools you can use to search peoples bio's on Twitter. We have numerous ways of identifying potential candidates, too many to go into here, Let me know if you would like to know more.

Duane R. • I use Twitter to engage my followers and share information that I find interesting. I try to keep the information pertinent to industries that I recruit in. I also follow folks that I anticipate recruiting or who pass referrals my way. I've tweeted several thousand messages over the last couple of years and I'd guess less than 1% have been a job posting. I followed someone yesterday that I initially found on Quora. We exchanged a couple of messages and I told him the industries and positions that I recruit. This morning he's sent me 12 leads that are interested in hearing about opportunities. I don't know if these people will be a fit for any of my current searches but feel that's not a bad return for a couple of messages back and forth.

Nancy P. • Like Duane, I use twitter to share information regarding the industry I am recruiting for and follow people in similar industries. For me it has not produced any active candidates, however I have connected with people who might be interested in the future. I definitely feel that social media is another tool that we can use in our tool box, but should not be the only tool we rely on. I read an article on twitter today that was posted on the ASTD page, that I think relates to this topic , "Hiring Is Getting Harder For Employers, Not Easier", it brings up social media, http://bit.ly/hSiZ0t

Lisa K. • Great thoughts, everyone! Thank you. As Nancy mentioned, another good tool!

Sam H. • It can be a great tool for finding and engaging with candidates when used properly. However it will often require constant attention and development in the short term before any long term gains can be realised.

Lisa, I appreciate this doesn't directly answer your question however I would say that as part of an overall attraction strategy Twitter should not be neglected.

Michelle B. • I too have this question as we are just now delving into the world of social media. I wonder though how effective a tool it can be for us as we are more of a local based agency with two branches in our state. We are more mid-managment level and down. Is twitter a viable option for us to use to source candidates since we are seeking to fill local positions only?

Bruce B. • @Michelle Twitter is for every level of hiring and searching. I am connected to hundreds of recruiters on Twitter and half of the tweets I receive are for hiring. It is every level from part time to full time, and admin assist to CFO's. I teach a class on social media at local college and show job seekers how to search jobs on Twitter.

Bert D. • Twitter searches provide a phenomenal real-time search mechanism. It is up to the recruiter to use this information as a guideline / search criteria / mechanism to source viable candidates.....

Paedra S. • Now, here's a huge opportunity. From my own experience I can tell that most head hunters and recruiters are employing passive sourcing and recruiting techniques via twitter. Yes, Twitter is an intrinsically shallow source of human capital data (max 140 characters), but unlike Facebook – it is searchable. Twitter's most useful search features are hash tags, geo-coding, and RSS feeds. Tracking conversations via hash tags and searching for candidates by location is an opportunity worth exploring. Google stated on multiple occasions that it believes Twitter’s real-time search is part of the future of the indexable web. It seems there is a competitive advantage to be gained by taking a more active role in leveraging Twitter to search for, find and acquire candidates!

Katherine W. • I recently joined Twitter and am getting to like it - took a while to get there as I am a LinkedIn fan. It it costly in terms of time to keep on top of it.

I wonder whether LinkedIn's SIGNAL (currently in Beta) which incorporates Twitter feed to enable realtime search is a better tool to use for job search and hiring?

Bruce B. • @Katherine I like LinkedIn also. But with the LinkedIn Signal the only tweets you see are those of your LinkedIn connections. Signal doesn't incorporate all of the tweets on Twitter.

Katherine W. • @bruce LN Signal can reach 3rd degree connections if you upgrade your account. Useful if you are a recruiter or employer.

Bruce B. • @Katherine you don't need to upgrade to see 3rd degree connections. There are a couple of simple work arounds to find out their names. I teach LinkedIn Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced classes and I show the students the work around as part of the course.

Alexis P. • There was an article on Ere a few days ago on how to get your job ads on twitter to get Retweeted and touch a broader pool of potential candidates. Not the holy grail when it comes to recruiting on twitter but worth a read.
http://www.ere.net/2011/02/14/tweet-this/

As @Bert and @Paedra indicated, the key feature of Twitter for recruiting is the real-time search. More precisely how do you search for candidates? Keyword based search in tweets? search for people directly? look at followers? Do you try to find candidates or experts in the given field? Any concrete example you could share?

- -. • I've been out for work for 5 months already. My career coach advised me not to waste anytime with Twitter. She told me that I am better off networking with people through LinKedIn or with forme coleagues.

Sam H. • @Katherine, I don't believe you need an upgraded account to see 3rd degree connections in your signal results. But the limitations to Signal apply beyond that level.

As Bruce said, the work around's to finding users names can be helpful, that's no real secret though.

Sarang B. • It is not fair to compare twitter to LinkedIn. LI started as purely professional networking tool now aligning into job board. Twitter helps you to network, share ideas and connect with like-minded people. Now - it's how you use this networking best to searching jobs / candidates is up to you.

From candidate point of view - it's very important for you to be there connecting with your industry experts. Follow them, engage / reply their discussions - it's best way to introduce yourselves. You also have various tools like www.twitjobsearch.com. Also I think 1/3rd of job board jobs are being posted into twitter. It's easy and Free!!!

For recruiters PoV - it's again more of engagement / networking tool. You engage with 1 person in your target company; you can surely find others. Go to their profile page and see others he is following. You can also search twitter bios through twellow.com, followerwonk.com. Read my post on x-ray.. http://bit.ly/dSjshW

Twitter is just another tool in recruiter's armory. It's not fair to compare to job boards OR LinkedIn. Just because it does not give you direct CVs - doesn't mean it is absolute. If you can't find people with right tactics - someone else will. You will loose on competitive advantage.

Patty V. • When using Twitter for sourcing you have to use the platform for what it is and that is to create a social connection. Twitter is for creating engaging conversations that allow you to build a relationship with those who are tweeting and reading your tweets. I think where HR fails is using it as a replacement for a job board, simply putting your job posting links out there and saying we are looking for C# Programmer falls flat. There is plenty for HR to tweet about, your value propositions around your work culture, your leadership, your company's social responsibilities and most importantly why your company is a great employer. The platform is intended to create two-way dialogue--- and trust me it takes work, but if used to the extent for which it was created you'll see a better source response in filling your candidate pipeline and directly relate it to Twitter.